Super fx roms unlimited speed edition

[Drakon]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydh_jvlrDrE&feature=youtu.be

I finally found the secret to getting superfx games to overclock to any speed I desire.  I noticed that starfox 1 had the ability to overclock to any speed but other games didn't.  Starfox 1 is the only superfx game programmed for the mario chip, it turns out all superfx chips after the mario chip have a "double speed mode" but the mario chip doesn't.  I figured maybe double speed mode was causing games to crash once overclocked past a certain point.  I didn't use any debuggers, tools, or even disassemblers, I just used...a hex editor.  I took my experience from romhacking gb games and applied what I know about the hex versions of certain asm commands to find where the roms were setting double speed mode.  I changed the address being written to to an unused address and sure enough, the roms no longer have a speed limit.

[ChronoMoogle]

I am in love with those super smoove super fx graphics. I didn't like the overclocked Starfox 1, but Starfox 2 and Stunt Race FX look like sexy beasts this way! (well... compared to the original speed^^)

[Drakon]

What's wrong with starfox 1?

[henke37]

For a starter, it wasn't in the video.

[Dr. Mario]

This is awesome, and I totally want to learn how to do it with an actual cart. You should try it with Doom at some point. It might make that game almost playable.

**Edit**
Nevermind, you already did overclock Doom.

[Lilinda]

Where's Doom on the video? I didn't see it when I skipped around...

[Drakon]

This is awesome, and I totally want to learn how to do it with an actual cart. You should try it with Doom at some point. It might make that game almost playable.

**Edit**
Nevermind, you already did overclock Doom.

My previous doom overclock was like 30 mhz, now I could get it going at 48 mhz.  The problem is I need to find a way to rig up two 8mbit eproms together since doom is a 16mbit game.  I also did this trick to vortex and it works great as well at 48 mhz.  I did some 50 mhz testing, starfox 2 at 50 mhz goes too fast for the snes to keep up but surprisingly stunt race fx runs fine start to finish at 50 mhz.

[MathUser2929]

You know you could submit these overclock hacks to RHDN, right? You really should submit them so they get more exposure. It isn't hard to do it, you should learn how to. If you can hack apart games and edit them like you do, you can do that. Then if you want exposure for your youtube videos of them you could probably link them in the description.

Edit: Definately share the Stunt Race FX overclocked patch. I hope you can get that one at 45HZ too. That's a pretty fun game to watch.

Also, I'm not sure what overclocking does, does it increase the FPS? If not, you should consider a hack to increase the FPS of Stuntrace FX. Be nice to see that game running smoothly.

[KingMike]

Does overclocking the chip too much have any downsides, such as possibly drawing too much power and frying the cart/console?

[Drakon]

You know you could submit these overclock hacks to RHDN, right? You really should submit them so they get more exposure. It isn't hard to do it, you should learn how to. If you can hack apart games and edit them like you do, you can do that. Then if you want exposure for your youtube videos of them you could probably link them in the description.

Edit: Definately share the Stunt Race FX overclocked patch. I hope you can get that one at 45HZ too. That's a pretty fun game to watch.

Also, I'm not sure what overclocking does, does it increase the FPS? If not, you should consider a hack to increase the FPS of Stuntrace FX. Be nice to see that game running smoothly.

I don't want to submit my hard work for free this time, sorry, there's always youtube to ooh and ahh at it.  I just mentioned in the above post that stunt race fx runs fine at 50 mhz, and I posted in the first post stunt race fx running at 48 mhz.

Also my patched roms are only good for use on real hardware.  In an emulator I'm sure you can make a rom run at any speed you like, getting it going that fast on the real hardware took a little romhacking magic.

What overclocking these carts does:

1: Framerate increase about equal to the speed difference.  Default clock speed is 21.47 mhz, stunt race fx is running at 50 mhz, so my cart is running at around 2.32x the original framerate.

2: The control response time increases.  At the default clock speed there was a lag in the controls, lag is equally as sped up as the framerate.

3: The gameplay speed increases.  It's not as bad as it sounds, since the control response time increases everything is equally as playable as before.  All you need to really do is adjust to the new speed which isn't hard, it feels more intense, but it's still just as playable as before.

Does overclocking the chip too much have any downsides, such as possibly drawing too much power and frying the cart/console?

Nope.  I've been running 48 mhz starfox 1 on a stock snes for a long time without issues.  Nothing fries, nothing has issues, these superfx chips are actually extremely durable.  I've built and sold a number of these carts since first overclocking starfox way back when.  Unfortunately this new discovery makes the older carts I built look slow except for maybe starfox 1.

So far I've done this with perfect success to starfox, starfox 2, stunt race fx, and vortex.  Doom is going to require some hardware trickery since it's a 16mbit game so I'm waiting on parts to do that.

[MathUser2929]

Well, I downloaded the youtube video at the highest quality and I can't really see any difference in Stunt Race FX. It probably would help if you could rig 2 emulators to play side by side so you are doing the same thing on each video. Theres a genesis emulator that could do this, it was created cause of this massive genesis proto release sometime back. It made it easier to document differences between protos and final.

Anyway, Stunt Race FX could use some improving. It controls slow, which is fine for Star Fox, but not really a racing game. I had this accessory years back that added a "power-steering" function to controllers. What I think it did was added rapid fire to the dpad. It was really noticable on Stunt Race FX. It kind of reminded me of F-Zero in how much better it controlled.

Too bad someone can't make a hack to make Stunt Race FX have a much better framerate and control faster. I imagine controlling faster takes adjustment but it could be for the better overall.

Edit: Perhaps using a video website other than youtube would show off the hack better? I think youtube still reduces videos 30 FPS so that could be why the games look the same to me.

[KingMike]

I agree that seeing modded and unmodded at the same time would make it easier to see the difference.

As to running two versions at once, I think some emulators will allow you to do that.
I know I did that with at least one version of bsnes. Just open two windows and set it to allow input while it doesn't have focus.
Though you would have them out of sync until you hit Start to start the game on both versions (or if you can map Reset to the game-control device).

[MathUser2929]

I forgot he said the hack only works on hardware. That means he recorded the videos using video capture hardware on his computer probably. So it wouldn't be possible for him to play two controllers at the same time probably.

[Drakon]

You can't set an emulator to run the rom at 50 mhz.  I'm making hardware recordings.

*edit*

Here you people go, straight from the real hardware:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfNI3HpUt-4&feature=youtu.be

See if you can spot the difference haha.

When you overclock the rom on real hardware the controls are faster, there's no more control delay with my overclocked carts.  My overclocked cart does just that, faster framerate and no more control response delay.  The downside to these carts is they have to be built.  But hey it's alteast cool to know it's possible to get the games running like this on the authentic hardware.

[MathUser2929]

Holy cow, the difference is quite apparent. The game looks alot better. Too bad this can't be done in emulation.

[henke37]

I am pretty sure that you can overclock a single chip in an emulator too. It's just a matter of finding the clock rate literal in the source code.

[Drakon]

I am pretty sure that you can overclock a single chip in an emulator too. It's just a matter of finding the clock rate literal in the source code.

Yeah you would need to recompile the emulator.  Another interesting thing I discovered is the ram chip speed can also effect the maximum overclock speed.